Police in Turkey have arrested 85 people following more than two weeks of anti-government protests. Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler said on Tuesday that 62 people had been detained in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, while 23 others had been arrested in the capital Ankara as a result of raids in several cities.
“The operations are against members of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, who also attended the Gezi Park protests, as part of an investigation being conducted by The detained people were accused of damaging public property and inciting violence.
Earlier, police detained a dozen people who stood still at Istanbul's Taksim Square in a form of passive defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authority after activists were ousted from a sit-in at Gezi Park over the weekend. Erodogan brushed aside criticism of the crackdown on Tuesday and vowed to increase the police's powers to deal with the unrest.